T is for us
by stilljustme
Summary: ""You need to let go." My mother's voice is gentle but firm, and I know I should... but I can't leave him. I can't." Memories of Tris as she prepares to leave for the world of death.
1. Chapter 1

I sit down beside him as he finally falls quiet. He never talks in his sleep, unlike Christina who still murmurs Will's name every now and then, or mine. Unlike Cara who sometimes produces half an article in the middle of the night, processing the things she learnt. I think Caleb does the same, just that he sleeps with his face buried in his hands. I know he feels guilty, and it makes me sad to see how little he has learnt from the past days. Well – how little both of us have learnt.  
About family. About truth, and love, and every moment of life we are given to celebrate it, embrace it, live it.

Tobias never talks. I hear him whisper my name, like a kiss in the night, but only when he is awake. If he sees me in his dreams, or Uriah, or his fears, I do not know.  
I just sit with him, taking in every detail about his face and the shape of his back under the blanket, the sound of his breathing, the smell of sour sweat and tears, and of sunbaked wood, still.  
Home.  
I sit with him and breathe him in without lungs, breathe him in with all that is left from me, until Tobias is me and I am Tobias, until there is nothing left between us.

Nothing except for the fact that I am dead.

"You need to let go."  
My mother's voice is as gentle and firm as her hands were when I was a child and she wiped my tears away.  
"I know" I say without looking away from him, caressing his face with fingers of air. What part of my DNA is it that keeps me here? And is it my genes that make me stay – or is it him?

"Do it for him." She echoes my thoughts but I know she doesn't mean the same. I know what she wants from me, expects from me. Whatever the fringe, Dauntless… my mother chose Abnegation not only for my father. She chose it because that's how she was. Selfless, caring, protective of us till the very end.  
The end, as I know by now, that is not just darkness embracing and drowning you. It is mist, grey and heavy, and endless paths through it, all eventually leading towards a pearly horizon. It took me a while to orientate me in here, but I have found him again. I see him, struggling to hold on, overwhelmed with grief that echoes through every part of my being.  
It hurts more than I thought I could bear to see him that way, broken by my failure, by my death.

I can't leave him. Even if the pain will destroy me – I can't.  
"I can't" I say and look up to my mother.  
She smiles tiredly, the same smile she had when Caleb and I left Abnegation. "I know it feels that way", she says, "but the longer you linger, the more he will suffer."  
I close my eyes, shutting both of them out. "Why?"  
"Because you don't belong in his world anymore. I am sorry."  
I feel her hands on my shoulders, soft and strong. "He really loves you. Let him take the memories you have made, and live on. I will wait for you."

Memories we have made a lot – not nearly enough for a life, but more than I thought I could have. Memories of pain and fear, of jealousy and rage, but those are not the ones I think of now.  
It is our first kiss I remember, and the Ferris Wheel, and his eyes as he threw the knife on me, and his laughter, and his hands on my waist, and the wind between us at night.

Memories.

I move closer to him, like a shadow. I am a memory, too, I realize. One of thousands that connect Tobias with me. Memories, moments of time.  
Memories I can't let go right now.

**A/N: I finished Allegiant five days ago, and it still chokes me up whenever I think of it, or of any of Elle Goulding's songs (yes, I loved the movie, too). So this is my attempt to somehow get over the ending. I hope you maybe like it, too.**


	2. Chapter 2

I heard that people are supposed to appear smaller when they sleep – or when they are dead – but Tobias does not. Even now, still as a stone, he fills up all the world around me. If I get close enough to him, maybe some energy will float on me and let me come back…

I lie down next to him, all wind and shadow, and move my fingers over the flames on his back. On his left shoulder, right above the arm, the last fiery tongue is interrupted, as if Tori halted the ink for a moment. It is only half a finger's breadth, but it leaves a spark of flame standing alone. A drop of ink I have never noticed before, never seen in my life…  
I know I shouldn't cry about such things – there are greater things I'm missing, after all – but it is always the little things that tear me up.  
The fog around me is whirling with my sobs, but I have no tears left, no hands to wipe my cheeks, no nothing but shadows of a girl who never saw that piece of Tobias.  
I don't want this! I don't deserve this.  
Maybe it was my time to die, but not like this. I was ready for darkness and forgetting, I was ready to embrace my parents and ask Will to forgive me and hug Al and tell him it's okay… but not this.

The standalone part of the tattoo is shaped like a T, small but distinctly. I stare at it till the sobbing stops and the world becomes calm again.  
Of course, for Christina, Cara, Caleb and Amar and George, who have come to sleep with us – them – nothing tonight has ever not been calm.

I move my airy fingers over the T on Tobias' skin, imagining the warmth of it. T for Tori, and for tattoo. I have never seen something more beautiful than his flames, surrounding the symbols of the factions. It is him, all together. Why didn't I realize it, why didn't he? Tobias was never damaged. He couldn't be. Broken, yes, I know, and I am afraid I only broke him more.  
But never damaged. He was everything, everything our world kept up for good.

_I don't want to be only one thing. I can't be. I want to be brave, I want to be selfless, intelligent and honest and kind._

I love him. I love him more than even this boundless world of in between could ever hold, love him with every cell of my heart and soul, with every thought and breath I take. It is all him. Everything I ever wanted to be. I love him with an intensity that would break me if there is anything left to be broken.  
I remember the first time I told him, the urge of that moment, when I realized that on second later it could be too late, that he would never know… I love him. I never thought I could love anybody that much, and I guess, I wasn't supposed to, either, but… I love him. For who he is, for who he was and has become.  
For letting me be myself and therefore changing me, making me a better, stronger person than I thought I would be.

I lean forward to kiss the small T, imagining to feel his smooth skin on my lips.  
Tobias. Four. It is strange how we found each other, given how different we seem – he wears his fears in his name and his wishes on his skin. Four fears to be summoned up whenever he is called, every time a warning to himself. All he thought would define him, clearly in his name, obvious to everyone.  
And his craving for being more, his longing to be better – to be what he was – engraved on his body, close to him, inseparable from him more than a name.

I chose the opposite. Tris is who I wanted to be, no longer Beatrice the Stiff, but Tris – I wanted to be free and new and independent and strong. This is what my name shouted out to the world, at least this is what I wanted it to shout out.  
And my tattoo… birds. They fly, yes, but they are still near. My greatest fear and my greatest wish combined. Does it need more to realize how queer – how damaged, really - I am?

And yet he loved me.


	3. Chapter 3

The T on Tobias' back keeps halting me. I circle it with airy fingers, then with my nose. When I try hard enough, maybe I can feel him. Once again. That is all I need, at least that's what I tell myself. That I could let go of him, of all… if I just can be with him one more time.  
But deep inside I feel that it wouldn't be like that – I won't be able to let go. What is one last touch?  
I need more. It was a long way for me to get ready for life, for living with what I have done, and I know I wouldn't have made it so far without him, or without Christina.  
Christina, whose name at once guides me to another name, another face, another one to torture me.  
Will.  
Beyond the horizon, in the world of death I belong to now, he is waiting for me. What can I tell him? How can I ask him for forgiveness?  
I try to imagine how it would be if I had died in his place, how his and Christina's lives would have gone on. Would they still be alive now? Would they have left Chicago with Tobias?

And where would he be? My thoughts fly back to him, as if he really is an anchor, strong enough to keep me in between. I know my parents wait for me, and I… I long to see them. I already miss my mother, though it can't be long since she left me to say goodbye.  
Will it never end? I thought that death, at least, would be the end of grief and longing, but it is not. I miss my parents, and Will, and Marlene and Uriah, I want to see them again.  
But I know that once I see them, I will have to wait decades to see Tobias again. I hope, for his sake, that it will be decades.

Memories fill me, and too many beloved faces, people I can't be near to anymore, people that wait for me… I have to go. I know it. Nothing can be worse than this in between, this seeing Tobias, feeling his grief but being unable to help him, It is my fault that he suffers that way, and that is the worst torture I have ever been under. It is my fault.

Will it be better once I'm gone? My mother said yes, and I want to believer her. I have to believe her, or I will never bring myself to leaving him.

I concentrate on the T again, stare at it till it drowns out every other picture, every other face…

T for the touch I crave, for the thrill to be alone with him, finally. T for talk, even though we talked mostly about dark things. For the tests our love had to go through, and won, in the end. T for trust because I now know Tobias trusted me, even when he didn't tell me everything.

I close my eyes and try again to shut out everything, even him, but I can't. The small T is burning through my eyelids, torturing me with stories of the past and promises of a future I will never have.  
I have to go.  
I have to, or I will lose my mind.

"Tobias." I say his name into the fog around me, and it shivers, takes up the word and sends it all over the place, vibrating with life. His name shatters the muddy streets of my imagination, whirling the grey around away. My in between world collapses, turning my sad little waiting room to dust. Only the horizon remains, pearly and beautiful and, though there is no door to be seen, definite. I know that when I allow my feet to carry me there, away from Tobias, I will never come back. Never. All the freedom I had in Dauntless… gone. Forever.

But I can't think about myself now, I have to think of our world. I died, but I died doing what I had to do. I did not fail my friends. The compound is like filled with new people. They know nothing about purity, or damaged genes as far as I heard. It is alright. Our city can heal one day.

I have to believe that Christina, Cara, George, Caleb and Tobias can, too. They have to.

Tobias. I close my eyes and try to breathe him in once again, I want to keep him, every part of him, close to my heart. I need him to stay a part of me, or I will no longer be the person I came to stand up for.

Tobias. He, too, starts with a T.  
Just like me.

In the bright, pearly light that is no longer dimmed by fog I open my eyes again and watch the T on his shoulder glow softly. Out there, the sun rises again, it is the seventh day since I died.  
I feel the rays of sunlight dance with the horizon, see their invitation for me to join them. We are both bathed by the same light now, him from outside, I from inside.

I still don't want to leave him, but suddenly I feel dragged away, slowly but steadily, and as I throw myself forward to reach for him, hold him, kiss him one last time, _just one last time_, my fingers float right through him again. I cry without tears, without a voice, I cry till my head seems to burst. Not now. Not now, I'm not ready, I promised I would come and I will, but later, later…

I get numb when death pulls me so far away that I can't recognize his face anymore. Tobias, I think, hoping his name will pulsate through my world again, strong enough to make me lose my fear. But the world remains quiet, and Tobias disappears as I am pulled on by death, to the pearly horizon I thought to be so close.

Tobias.

I hold on to thinking his name long after the light closes around me, but it somehow loses its pain. All I can think of is how beautiful a name it is, gentle and elegant and strong, and funny.

The T on his shoulder is for both of us, I realize, for Tobias and Tris, and for Together. Together, as we always will be. The light around me gets warmer, and I remember our bodies, entwined at night, moving together as one. We were immortal then, and somehow now I know that we still are. We will always be immortal, and together.

"Tris."  
I turn around and see my mother standing at what looks like a gap in the light. Behind it is even more light, so bright that I have to close my eyes, but I still hear her voice, close around me. I feel it is a good sign she called me "Tris" – as if she approves of the woman I chose to be.  
"Come" she says, and blindly, I take a step to follow her, then another… and then I can't go on.

Tobias Christina Caleb Tobias Cara George Tobias Amar Tobias Tobias Tobias…

I whisper their names, a question and a plea. I want to be ready, I want to. But how can I go when my friends are still suffering? I think of all we've been through.  
T for team, for training and trouble and tension and trust, once more.

I can feel my mother's smile warming the nothing around me. "They will be alright" she promises, "they will be changed, but they will mend. Come now."

I finally open my eyes though they burn with what feels like tears, but I couldn't say if they are from grief or relief, or from joy as I see a familiar silhouette moving out of the light. My father.

"Dad…" I stand there until he reaches us, and wraps his arms around us. "I am proud of you, Tris", he says, and that is when I know it was right. It was right to refuse to believe in damage and purity, it was right to break up the factions. No Abnegation father would ever say what my father just told me. He is so much more than just one slide of humanity.

"Thank you", I say, and smile because it makes another T, another word printed onto Tobias, whether he realizes it already or not. One day, when he joins me here, I will tell him.

"Come." He takes a hand of each of us and walks towards the blinding light, and I turn around to see him one last time for now…

Tobias, this is Tris. Thank you for everything, and trust us to be together again, forever…

White light floats around me, into me, lifts me up. I can't see my parents anymore but I know they are near, I know I will never lose them again…

I will wait for you, so don't hurry. I always jump first, remember? It is alright…

**- T is for us. –**


End file.
